Torment: Tides of Numenera - Colin McComb Interview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has interviewed Colin McComb about the adaptation of the Numenera pen-and-paper setting into the originally D&D-based Torment series.

RPS: What made you choose Numenera as the base for a new Torment game?

Colin McComb: It was mostly based on the world. [...] When we were developing the idea for Torment at the very beginning, Adam and I defined four pillars of what would be necessary to make a Torment game, and one of those was a world that’s unlike any other, and Numenera’s got that in spades. I don’t think there’s any game out there right now that does anything anywhere near it. 

RPS: What’s your favourite thing about the setting?

McComb: Well, I’m a big Gene Wolfe nerd. The whole Book of the New Sun has been a huge literary influence. [...] I just love the idea of thinking about what it is that humans are going to become, what the world is going to become after we’re all dust. It ties in really well with our legacy question, too – what does one life matter?

A lot of the interview goes into detail about the unusual mechanics of the Numenera system and is a bit puzzling if you don't know the pnp game. But one interesting note is that the way skills progress will be tied in to a character's personal background.

RPS: Do you link character progression to backstory development in the same way as Numenera – that thing of, if you want to give yourself a particular skill, you come up with a backstory for your character to justify how you know it?

McComb: I think that’s currently the plan, yeah. We want to make sure that we have a good story reason for everything so it seems seamless, and interactive as opposed to just, ‘Woop, you hit a tier, and now you can cast a fireball!’.